Kathleen Kilcup – Runner-Up Selected by Devon Moore

With Tarsal ClawEvery separation is a link.–Simone Weil

I.
Once, a broke-winged bee landed on my arm
and held my hair with tarsal claws.
Black ribs, yellow ribs, dark thorn against a pale field.
I watched this small accordion labor
headed, who knows where –some oasis on the eastern edge of desert.

II.
In Kirkland, Washington, my grandfather arrives at the eastern edge of a desert.His many estranged children are there, stuffing ice chips into his hot, dry mouth.

He didn’t know why we hid our eyes, and into his eighties pressed familyportraits on us, as though we had simply misunderstood his purpose. Suppose we had.

Soon and very soon, the ice chips will stop circling his tongue,and all will be forgiven –
language, especially.
I have never told the truth to anyone I loved.

Adrian Potter – Finalist

Excerpts from the Guide to Modern Survival

Practice cowardice.
Learn to sidestep the truth,
discuss the weather and nothing more;
ignore chances for conflict floating
between you and the stranger who agrees
that yes, it is indeed hot enough for them.

Keep at hand an ample supply of:
conversation starters and argument finishers,
nostalgia for the world you remember
from childhood, patience, faith,
and humorous anecdotes.

Exercise caution.
Remember where recklessness has led
your predecessors: scorned, ostracized,
forgotten, splintered into fragments
that never quite fit back together,
lonely in small inconsolable rooms.

An Insomniac’s Lullaby

You must learn how to ignore life’s internal rhythm
coaxing you to remain cognizant, the blaring neon
of nocturnal thoughts and dissonance-driven distractions;
you have to turn a deaf ear towards the lowdown lyrics
of loneliness; you need to become indifferent to stillness,
and welcome noise as if it’s an unrequested blessing,
acclimate your soul to an alternative version of silence;
you have to manufacture sleep from nothing in this city,
taxis and trucks careening through the tollways of your dreams,
perceiving night sirens and stray dog barks and infant shrieks
as de facto music; you must become a composer, an understudy
to overtone and acoustics, stitching together splintered intervals
of time, tempo, harmony, an apprentice to the blues scales
that continually bring you down like gravity; you must
remain unafraid of the redundancy felt after midnight,
aware that any restless explorations of restlessness might
induce further restlessness; you need to block out everything
within the crowded room of consciousness except sleep,
your oldest friend, who lulls in the corner and calls you in
step by half-step with no compass but the blues, no company
but the uncertainty of the journey, of all that you hear, of arrival.

Noctuary

Sometimes insomnia is an alley too shadowy
to stroll through safely. There’s a flooded field

in my thoughts, inundated by the inexorable
march of digital numbers pressing forward

on the clock. I secretly yearn for a night’s sleep
that doesn’t feel like drowning. Full moon tonight

and the dead are restless, reincarnating themselves
in my dreams. Desire is always a hazardous thing

to reveal. Words so readily betray what they’re
meant to represent, a disappointment so familiar

it almost feels comforting. Maybe I hear the blues
or maybe I don’t. This is a choice I‘m always making.